


i'm seventeen, don't hold your breath

by delayofgame



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Falling In Love, High School AU, M/M, i love these dumb hockey boys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 23:20:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16168853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delayofgame/pseuds/delayofgame
Summary: The kid shuffles his feet. “I’m Noah, by the way.”Noah. Putting a name to the face makes this all more personal, makes it so that Jack can’t really be mad at him anymore. Even though it would be easy to be bitter about his net with no holes in it and his nice stick that’s actually long enough for him and his skates that probably cost five times what Jack’s did.Jack smiles at Noah, and it's mostly genuine. “I'm Jack.”





	i'm seventeen, don't hold your breath

**Author's Note:**

> basically jack is a lower middle class kid who loves hockey but his parents have a hard time affording it. noah is a rich kid who plays on a prep school team. i know noah went to st. sebastian's but the school in this fic is just an unnamed prep school in an unnamed massachusetts town. 
> 
> obviously none of the events portrayed in this fic are real and this is simply a work of fiction. if this fic is about you or someone you know please click away.
> 
> title is from the song seventeen by peach pit

Jack cleared the trail through the woods himself when he was nine. It zig-zags over hills and between the rough trunks of enormous oak trees, sometimes only identifiable by memory; the crude markings Jack made initially long since destroyed by the elements. Jack has been walking this trail for years. At this point, almost two months after his seventeenth birthday, he finds it easy to lug his skates, stick, and puck bag the entire half mile to the pond. 

The pond is his. It’s near the edge of town, surrounded by acres of forest on all sides. Only one (official) trail goes by it, a small and poorly-marked extension of the main trail system that skirts around the western shore before doubling back towards the paths frequented by dog-walkers and cross-country skiers. The trail is so neglected that it becomes impossible to follow once the first snow falls. Jack found it by accident one summer, so caught up in his youthful imagination that he didn’t notice he had ventured off of the main trail until he saw the glittering surface of the water. Hockey was everything, back then (and it still is, if he’s to be honest), and he immediately had visions of his own private rink amongst the trees. It took a lot of effort and almost-getting-lost to make the trail originating in his backyard. The sound of his skates against the ice cutting through the stillness of the forest makes it all worth it every time. 

The snow is really piling up this year, sitting heavy on the branches of the pines. Jack has brought along his father’s heavy-duty shovel for this trip. The temperature has been consistently low over the past week, and Jack hopes that the snow is still powdery enough to clear with relative ease. He nearly threw his back out trying to clear a particularly wet and heavy snow cover the previous year. 

Jack stops in his tracks when he reaches the bottom of the hill, about fifteen feet from the edge of the pond. He's not alone in his sanctuary. 

Three people are out on the freshly-cleared ice. High school boys, by the looks of it. They have two nets set up, and they seem to be doing some sort of two-on-one drill. The one defending is the tallest of the group and is wearing a red sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo of the town’s prep school. 

_Prep kids_ , Jack thinks, sourly.

He knows their types. They’re the kids that take over the town’s outdoor rink every winter, scaring off the elementary school kids and the girls in their clean, white figure skates. They’re more important, because they play for Prep. They’re better hockey players because they play for Prep. They play for Prep because their parents are rich enough to send them there. 

In this town, there isn’t a difference between money and talent. The best players are the best because they learned to skate before they could walk, and only someone who lives in one of the big houses on the hill in the north side of town can afford to put a toddler out on the ice for five hours a week. Only the kids decked out in brand-new gear every season get to say that they’re the _best_. 

Jack almost broke that rule, once. He could outskate everyone in peewee. He could outshoot everyone in bantam. His coaches wouldn’t let him off the ice on power plays. When the team really needed to score, his teammates knew who to pass to. 

Despite all of that, he was always the _poor kid_. He was always the one with holes in his gloves and the slightly too big hand-me-down shoulder pads from some cousin in Andover. When the time came for the best hockey players to start at Prep, Jack slipped unnoticed out of their ranks. 

Jack knows that none of it is the fault of the kids out on the ice. It’s easy, though, to resent them. 

He sits down on the snowbank and laces up his skates. 

The kids have noticed him by the time he steps out onto the ice. They just stare at him as if _he’s_ intruding on _their_ territory, as if they got here first. Jack has half a mind to tell them to leave, but he knows that he doesn’t have much ground to stand on. It isn’t his property. 

“Who are you?” one of the kids asks. His tone is accusatory.

Jack doesn't answer. His name doesn't matter, and that isn't the point of the kid’s question, anyway. The point is to make it clear that Jack isn't welcome. 

Isn't one of them. 

“I just want to skate,” Jack says. He has no leverage so he's putting himself at their mercy, his statement posed as a request. 

The kid in the red sweatshirt looks at Jack apologetically. “You can use that whole area,” he says, gesturing to the end of the rectangular shoveled space farthest from the edge of the pond. 

He's a bit taller than Jack, and his hair sticks out from under his knitted hat. His eyes are rimmed with dark eyelashes. 

“Thanks,” Jack says, as if the kid did him a favor. He picks up his bag and skates over, as far from the group as he can, feeling their eyes on his back as he does so.

The ice is flat and smooth. Jack comes to a stop, kicking up snow that settles on the glassy surface. He feels about six inches shorter under the group’s scrutiny. He worries that they’re just going to keep watching him all afternoon, but eventually they get back to chatting and the sound of their sticks against the ice fills the air. 

Jack puts down three of his old, worn-out gloves to use as obstacles and starts his usual stickhandling practice. The Prep kids are loud and rowdy, bumping into each other and slapping their sticks on the ice, but Jack tries to tune them out. He regrets not bringing headphones.

Jack ends up heading back significantly earlier than he normally would, letting the Prep kids take full control of the pond again. They ignore him when he walks by them on his way back to the trail. 

He lets them win. It’s pointless to fight what’s already been decided.

\--

Jack shows up later the next day, about an hour before sunset, hoping that the Prep kids will have already left. He's not so intimidated by them that he’s trying to avoid them, necessarily. He just always loved the quiet and the feeling of being alone if only for a few hours. 

When he reaches the bank, however, he sees that someone is out on the ice with a stick and a net. Upon further inspection, Jack realizes that it's the kid in the red sweatshirt from the day before. He has about fifteen pucks and is taking slapshots over and over and over again, some pinging off the crossbar but most making it under and into the net. He doesn’t notice Jack at all until Jack steps onto the rink and drops his bag and stick on the snowbank. 

The kid looks up, slightly startled.

“Hi,” Jack says. 

“Uh, hey,” the kid replies. He leans against his stick and watches Jack put on his skates, the pile of pucks in and around the net temporarily forgotten. 

Jack gets his skates laced and grabs his stick. The kid moves aside to give him room in front of the net when he skates over. 

“Sorry if we stole your ice,” the kid says. “My teammate’s sister told us about it when she was walking her dog on the trail before the first snow. I kinda figured nobody else would know about it.” 

“It’s fine,” Jack says, and they both know it’s not. 

The kid shuffles his feet. “I’m Noah, by the way.”

 _Noah_. Putting a name to the face makes this all more personal, makes it so that Jack can’t really be mad at him anymore. Even though it would be easy to be bitter about his net with no holes in it and his nice stick that’s actually long enough for him and his skates that probably cost five times what Jack’s did. 

Jack smiles at Noah, and it's mostly genuine. “I'm Jack.”

They each take a few shots. Jack isn’t _trying_ to show off, but it feels pretty good when he goes bar down and Noah quietly says “woah.” 

“Dude, you’re good,” Noah says. “Who do you play for?”

“Who do you think,” Jack replies. 

Noah must sense that it's a touchy subject. “If the rest of your game is as good as your shot, you could be on our first line, easy.”

The compliment seems to come easily. Jack isn’t used to this; being told how good he is without some sort of caveat. It always seems to come back to his financial situation: where he lives, who he knows, what he wears. Hockey is never just hockey in this town. But Noah hasn’t said anything about the duct tape on his skates, he just said that Jack had a damn good shot. Which he does, he knows he does, but hearing it from a _Prep kid_ is a whole different animal.

They shoot around some more, passing to each other for one-timers and pulling progressively more ridiculous shootout moves to make the other laugh. Jack tries to do a spin in the air with the puck balanced on his blade and ends up falling on his ass, and Noah cracks up so hard he has to sit down on the snowbank to get himself back together.

“Dude, you almost had that one,” Noah says, breathless. 

The sun has started to sink below the tree line, making the sky fade into a soft orange. The temperature has dropped significantly. Noah’s cheeks are red and his breath is visible in the frigid air. 

“My mom will flip if I’m not home soon,” Jack says, getting back to his feet and brushing snow off of his sweatpants. 

“Same here.” Noah grins. “Same time tomorrow?”


End file.
